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Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum has given his thoughts on the juxtaposition of the hair metal scene.
While his band were mostly removed from that genre, Bottum recalls looking at the scene from afar.
The scene’s leading bands often featured teased hair, make up and feminine dress styles. But that was contradicted by aggressive party vibes and, in some cases, rampant misogyny.
As a young gay man, Bottum found the whole thing “really weird”.
He tells the Beardo & Weirdo podcast: “When Guns N’ Roses came out, just the sort of look of those bands and sort of the hair metal vibe that was going on, it was a really intense, kind of a funny juxtaposition.
“Those guys, even Guns N’ Roses or Poison or Warrant or whoever, they were very feminine. I mean, teased hair and a lot of makeup and costuming, but super, super misogynistic.
“And it was a really weird world to be in at that time, and it was just sort of taken for granted. MTV and the videos that we watched were really just so over the top, misogynistic like crazy.
“It was ugly to women. We can say that now and we can recognise it now but when we were in the thick of it, we just kind of took it for granted.”
Now a queer icon, Bottum came out in the early 90s and says it was “intense” dealing with the hair metal world.
“It was an intense place to be for a gay man in that world,” he adds. “We didn’t start off as that kind of band. But at one point we got kind of lumped into sort of those kinds of bands, and that was a hard place to navigate.”
On being one of the first rock stars to come out as gay, Bottum adds: “I really feel like I was a pioneer in that regard. Rob Halford did not come out of the closet until a couple of years after I had.
“Freddie Mercury never publicly even came out, albeit he’s in a band that sings opera music and they wear tight clothes and long hair and they’re called Queen.
“So many examples. Elton John too. But I remember when I was little, I was a fan of Elton John and I remember hearing him on the radio and he was talking about his wife. And I was, like, ‘Wait. What?’
“As a young kid, I was looking for anyone that I could relate to in that way, but there really wasn’t.”
